Annie Oakley's hat, guns going on auction block

This handout photo, provided by Heritage Auctions, shows Annie Oakley in one of her cabinet photos. Relatives of Oakley are selling items that once belonged to the legendary sharpshooter, including a Stetson hat, guns, letters and photographs. Heritage Auctions will offer up about 100 items related to Oakley on Sunday in Dallas.

This handout photo, provided by Heritage Auctions, shows a Stetson hat worn by Annie Oakley. Relatives of Annie Oakley are selling items that once belonged to the legendary sharpshooter including a Stetson hat, guns, letters and photographs. Heritage Auctions will offer up about 100 items related to Oakley on Sunday in Dallas. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Heritage Auctions)

In this handout photo, provided by Heritage Auctions, Annie Oakley is seen as The Western Girl in a Cabinet Photo, signed and inscribed on verso. This is one of a series of photographs taken in 1902 or 1903 in New York. Relatives of Oakley are selling items that once belonged to the legendary sharpshooter including a Stetson hat, guns, letters and photographs. Heritage Auctions will offer up about 100 items related to Oakley on Sunday in Dallas.(AP Photo/Courtesy of Heritage Auctions)

DALLAS — Relatives of legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley are offering up a collection of items — including her Stetson hat, guns, letters and photographs — in an auction that one expert says hits the mark for its breadth and sentimental value.

On Sunday, Heritage Auctions will offer up about 100 Oakley-related items in Dallas, including a 12-gauge Parker Brothers shotgun that is expected to fetch about $100,000. Two Marlin .22-caliber rifles are expected to sell for more than $20,000 each.

Oakley gained fame in the 1880s and 1890s for her shooting skills as a performer in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. She died in 1926 at the age of 66, but has remained a pop culture icon.

“The country kind of took her to heart,” said Tom Slater, Heritage’s director of Americana auctions.

Over the decades, her likeness has appeared on everything from dolls to lunchboxes and her life story inspired a Hollywood movie and Broadway’s “Annie Get Your Gun.”

The items are being offered up by Oakley’s great-grandnieces — sisters Tommye Tait and Terrye Holcomb of California.

What makes this auction significant, Paul Fees, former senior curator at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., said, is the number of items in the collection and the fact that it’s been in the family all this time.

He also said many of the letters speak to how close the family was. In one letter to William Butler, Oakley refers to Serene, telling him to “give dear little Billie a big hug.”

The photos in the auction include several of Oakley hunting with her dog, Dave, and more formal shots of her posing with a gun. A promotional mini-postcard that Oakley sent William Butler has the words “Compliments of Annie Oakley” on the front with an adjacent heart that’s been pierced with a bullet.